Make a big scene bigger.

Create cinematic movie titles, intros, and transitions. Start a fire or make it rain. Animate a logo or a character. With After Effects CC, the industry-standard animation and creative compositing app, you can take any idea and make it move.

Highlights

New in the October 2018 release

The October 2018 release of After Effects CC (version 16.0) rolls out exciting new features for visual effects artists, graphics editors, and animators. Read on for a quick introduction to these features and links to resources offering more information.

Advanced puppet tools for mesh sculpting

New Advanced and Bend pins let you precisely twist, bend, curve, and scale animations. Explore new ways to animate with new Advanced and Bend pins in the Puppet Tool.

With better precision, and the ability to switch between pin types, control your animations with the Advanced pin that enables you to scale and rotate your mesh to detailed precision. The Bend pin lets you create different deformations by curving and bending your animations.

Native Depth Passes for 3D Compositions

Generate a depth pass with the After Effects Classic 3D or CINEMA 4D renderer. Composite objects quickly and easily in 3D space. Apply depth effects such as Depth of Field, Fog 3D, and Depth Matte so elements look natural or use depth data to simulate 3D looks.

Z-depth can now be extracted by the 3D channel effects from a nested composition that contains 3D layers. This can be used to apply 3D depth effects to the composition layer, such as a depth of field blur, or to generate a matte for depth compositing or color correction.

Generate a Depth Pass the Classic 3D and the Cinema 4D Renderer. Depth Pass lets you set objects into a scene and apply depth of field parameters to your object without going into multiple panels, dropdowns, or a third-party application to make it look natural or as part of the scene.

Easier and faster expressions

New JavaScript engine for expressions

Create expressions easily with the new JavaScript expression engine that makes creating expressions more accessible. Plus, you get a 6x boost in performance and the ability to save each expression to a library that you can easily access again and again. You get a faster and easier way to write expressions and save favorite expressions to a custom expression library panel in the UI.

Editor and UX improvements

Editor improvements: The expression field in the Timeline panel has received ease-of-use enhancements:

Monospace font: The expression editor field now uses Source Code Pro.

Auto-resizing: The expression editor field now automatically adjusts when you click into it to show as much of the expression as possible.

Enable or disable all expressions on selected layers: All expressions on a layer can now be disabled or enabled via two new menu commands in the Layer > Switches submenu, or by right-clicking on a layer and opening the Switches submenu.

Expression error banner improvements: The expression error banner (the orange bar that appears in the Composition panel when an expression fails to evaluate) has been updated:

Buttons in the banner use easier-to-see dark icons.

A new Hide Expression Error Banner button hides the banner. This button disables the Show Warning Banner When Project Contains Expression Errors option in Preferences > General. To show the expression error banner again, re-enable the preference.

New methods and attributes

This release introduces the following expression reference methods and attributes:

Responsive Design — Time

Create motion graphics that can adapt to changes in length while preserving the integrity of protected keyframes. Export your designs as Motion Graphics templates for increased editorial flexibility.

Motion graphics involve keyframes and when the length of a composition changes, the keyframes must be adjusted as well, involving repetitive work when iterating. The Responsive Design features in After Effects, allow you to author graphics that adapt to later changes. Responsive Design – Time in After Effects enables adaptive time-stretching when a composition is nested or exported as a Motion Graphics template. When the in and out points of the composition are adjusted, the duration of protected regions is preserved and unprotected regions are time-stretched.

Selective color grading with Lumetri Color

Take the guesswork out of curve adjustments with innovative new Lumetri Color tools for selective color correction. Each curve has two axes with paired values, making it easy to fine-tune colors accurately.

Innovative new curve adjustment tools make selective color grading simple and straightforward. Two axes allow you to adjust Hue to Hue and Hue to Luma values with a clear visual representation. This provides precision to take the guess work out of curve adjustment.

Get fast, accurate, precision planar tracking with the GPU-accelerated Mocha AE plug-in. It’s updated with a simplified interface, includes retina/high DPI support, and works natively inside After Effects.

After Effects 16.0 includes the Mocha AE CC 6.0 plug-in from Imagineer Systems - Boris FX. This replaces the stand-alone Mocha AE application that was included with previous releases of After Effects. The Mocha AE CC plug-in includes the same accurate planar tracking as the stand-alone Mocha AE application, but features a new interface and is now GPU-accelerated.

Adobe Animate and Adobe XD integration

Import from Adobe Animate

Adobe Animate CC documents (.fla) can now be imported into After Effects as a composition of layered .swf files. Ensure that the Animate 19.0 version is installed on the same computer.

For more information, see Importing FLA files into After Effects.

Export to After Effects from Adobe XD

This release of Adobe XD CC can export layers and artboards to your After Effects project. This functionality provides seamless assets transfer between XD and After Effects, with native mapping of layers, artboards, vectors, text, and artwork. The workflow enables designers to send to After Effects groups of layers and define advanced micro-interactions or artboards to create complex and refined transitions or interactions.

Create in VR 180, preview in the headset

Jump into immersive video with support for 180 VR. Add VR effects and work with 180 and 360 material interchangeably. Publish finished videos in the Google VR 180 format on YouTube or other platforms. A new Theater Mode option allows you to preview rectilinear content in a head-mounted display (HMD).

Support for VR 180

With this release of After Effects, you can create and preview immersive content with a 180-degree field of view. There are two new 180 stereoscopic modes to preview your composition in an HMD:

New GPU- and performance-optimizing effects include Fill, Curves, Exposure, Noise, Tritone, Set Matte and Color Balance. The Wave Warp effect is now multithreaded and renders 2-3x faster by using multiple CPU cores. Experience faster H.264 and HEVC decoding on the latest macOS.

New GPU-accelerated effects

The following effects now render using your computer GPU when the Project Settings > Video Rendering and Effects > Use option is set to Mercury GPU Acceleration:

Color Balance (HLS)

Curves

Fill

Exposure

Linear Wipe

Noise

Tritone

Set Matte

Venetian Blinds

Wave Warp effect CPU improvement

The Wave Warp effect is now multi-threaded and renders 2x-3x faster by using multiple CPU cores.

Median effect algorithm improvement

The Median effect has been updated to a modern algorithm that renders much faster than the previous median algorithm and that supports 32-bpc color. The new algorithm renders differently at layer edges, so the previous algorithm has been preserved as separate effect, Median (Legacy). Projects saved in previous versions of After Effects apply the Median (Legacy) effect to preserve the rendering result.

Other enhancements

UI enhancements

After Effects now uses Adobe Clean UX for the user interface.

The disclosure triangle (twirly arrow) is updated to an open-triangle design.

It is now easier to find and identify GPU-accelerated effects or to determine whether Mercury GPU Acceleration is enabled for the open project.

In the Effects & Presets panel, you can filter the list of effects to show only GPU-accelerated effects. Click the panel menu and choose Show GPU Capable Effects Only.

In the Effect Controls panel, GPU-accelerated effects display the GPU acceleration badge next to the effect name.

At the bottom of the Project panel, a rocket ship icon indicates whether the project is set to use Mercury GPU Acceleration. If the rocket ship icon is bright, the project is set to Mercury GPU Acceleration. If the rocket ship icon is dim with a power button icon, the project is set to Mercury Software Only. Click the rocket ship icon to open the Project Settings > Video Rendering and Effects tab, where you can choose whether Mercury GPU Acceleration is enabled and which GPU technology is used.

Set guide lines position

Guide lines can be set to a precise pixel position. After you create a guide line (drag from the horizontal or vertical ruler), right-click and choose Edit Position, then enter the new position as a number of horizontal or vertical pixels from the composition origin (upper-left corner).

Install scripts and ScriptUI panels from the UI

You can install After Effects scripts or ScriptUI panels by selecting new commands from the File > Scripts panel, or by dragging script files into the Project panel while you hold down the modifier keys. Scripts installed through these methods are copied to the current user preferences folder, and appear in the File > Scripts menu or Window menu (for ScriptUI panels) after you restart After Effects.

New Home screen and Home button

The After Effects Home screen when you first launch it

When you launch After Effects, it now displays a Home screen, which includes an option to create a project or open an existing project.

You can also view the Home Screen at any time by pressing the new Home button on the toolbar, which is displayed to the left of the Selection tool.

The options on the Home screen evolve as you keep using After Effects. The contents of the Home screen are tailored based on your familiarity with After Effects and your Creative Cloud membership plan.

New Learn panel and Learn workspace

The Learn panel is designed for new users to help them create a composition quickly while introducing them to panels, timeline, and effects.

Learn panel and the Learn workspace

The panel includes the following information:

After Effects overview

Learn the basics

The new Learn workspace offers a simpler interface with only four panels (Learn panel, Composition panel, Project panel, and the Timeline panel) to help new users get started with After Effects. The Learn panel is docked to the side so that you can follow the instructions while you still have clear access to the rest of workspace.

Other changes

Saving a project file as a previous version has been updated to Save a Copy As CC (15.x) or Save a Copy As CC (14.x). To save a project as 13.x from After Effects 16.0, first save it as 15.x or 14.x, then open the project in one of those versions and save a copy as 13.x.

Deleting multiple empty folders in the Project panel no longer asks you to confirm the deletion if all of the folders are empty.

The Create Nulls From Paths panel now creates nulls directly above the layers containing the selected paths, instead of at the top of the layer stack.

The Synthetic Aperture Color Finesse plug-in is no longer included with After Effects.

The Ray-traced 3D composition renderer has been deprecated, and is labeled as such in the UI. It will be removed in a future release of After Effects. For better performance, create 3D compositions with only the CINEMA 4D or Classic 3D renderers.

Description

FAQ

What is After Effects CC and who is it for?
After Effects CC is the industry-leading animation and creative compositing software used by a wide variety of motion graphics and visual effects artists. It offers superior control, a wealth of creative options, and integration with other post-production applications — and it's available only in Creative Cloud.

Does After Effects still support 32-bit operating systems?
No. The performance benefits of native 64-bit support make it the best choice for the demanding technical requirements of working with video, particularly HD and higher resolution content. Offering only 64-bit support enables Adobe to optimize performance even further.

I use a Mac. How does the lack of 32-bit support affect me?
The lack of 32-bit support does not affect the majority of Mac computers that use Intel® processors. The only Mac users affected by the lack of 32-bit support are those using Intel based Mac computers with Intel Core™ Duo (single-core) processors. Refer to the After Effects CC system requirements to make sure your computer meets the minimum system requirements.

Will my existing plug-ins work with After Effects CC?
Any 64-bit plug-ins designed for After Effects will work in After Effects CC. Any 32-bit plug-ins for After Effects will need new versions designed for 64-bit computing. For more information, contact the plug-in manufacturers.

System Requirements

Your computer must meet the minimum technical specifications outlined below to run and use After Effects CC.

Internet connection and registration are necessary for required software activation, validation of subscriptions, and access to online services.*

macOS

Minimum requirement

Processor

Multicore Intel processor with 64-bit support

Operating system

macOS versions 10.12 (Sierra) or 10.13 (High Sierra)

RAM

8GB RAM minimum (16GB recommended)

Hard disk space

6GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on a volume that uses a case-sensitive file system or on removable flash storage devices)

Additional disk space for disk cache (10GB recommended)

Monitor resolution

1440x900 or greater display resolution

Internet

Internet connection and registration are necessary for required software activation, validation of subscriptions, and access to online services.*

* Notice to users: Internet connection, Adobe ID, and acceptance of license agreement required to activate and use this product. This product may integrate with or allow access to certain Adobe or third-party hosted online services. Adobe services are available only to users 13 and older and require agreement to additional terms of use and the Adobe Privacy Policy. Applications and services may not be available in all countries or languages and may be subject to change or discontinuation without notice. Extra fees or membership charges may apply.

VR system requirements

Note: Requirements vary between VR systems. The requirements listed here are the base requirements only

i Note: NVIDIA has publicly released windows ODE drivers that support the CUDA 9.2 SDK used in the latest release of After Effects. This is not the Microsoft default driver, but you can download this driver directly from NVIDIA, Version 411.63 (of the 410 series drivers).

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Change Log

After Effects CC 16.0.1 (December 2018)

Apple ProRes support, including ProRes 4444 and ProRes 422 formats

April 2018 Update (15.1)

Streamline graphics creation with Master Properties

Create multiple variations of a single composition with Master Properties. Choose properties like text, position and color to adjust in context, without having to open a precomp to make changes.

Advanced Puppet Engine

Twist and bend layers with greater control and smoother deformations. Add pins to any shape and the Advanced Puppet Engine adds mesh detail where you need it most.

Essential Graphics Panel improvements

Add most timeline properties to the Essential Graphics panel, including 2D position, rotation and scale. Export them as Motion Graphics template controls to customize your design in Premiere Pro.

Data-driven animation improvements

More easily import and use native data files (including JSON, CSV, and TSV) right in the timeline. A public API lets third parties implement other data file format support. Link properties to data more easily with the pick whip without enabling expressions first.

Performance and GPU optimizations

The Add Grain, Remove Grain and Match Grain effects are now multi-threaded for up to 5x faster performance. GPU usage is more efficient: work with larger frame sizes without memory errors.

Open Motion Graphics templates in After Effects

Motion Graphics templates can be opened as a project in After Effects, retaining compositions and assets. Make edits and then save as a project or export as a new Motion Graphics template for users of Premiere Pro.

Support for Adobe Immersive Environment and improved VR Plane to Sphere effect

Preview your VR composition the way it’s meant to be seen, in a VR head-mounted display. The Adobe Immersive Environment supports the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift on Mac and Windows. An overhauled VR Plane to Sphere effect delivers higher-quality transformations.

Video Limiter effect

Limit chroma and luma values to meet broadcast specifications. Apply to individual layers or to an adjustment layer to limit your entire composition.

The January 2018 update for After Effects CC includes New After Effects Format Support and Memory Improvements

New Format Support

This update includes support for three new formats across After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Adobe Media Encoder:

Variable frame rate video with audio sync

Footage recorded with a variable frame rate, such as from screen capture software or video shot on mobile phones, now maintains audio sync when played back or exported.

ARRI ALEXA Mini MXF/ARRIRAW

Footage captured by the ARRI ALEXA Mini camera in MXF/ARRIRAW format (ARRIRAW codec in an MXF container file) can now be imported.

HEVC (H.265) QuickTime

HEVC (also known as H.265) codec footage in a QuickTime (.MOV) container, such as produced by an iPhone or iPad with iOS 11 or a DJI Phantom 4 drone, can now be imported into After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Adobe Media Encoder.

VR Improvements

Work with higher-resolution VR footage with lower GPU memory requirements through more efficient cubemap layout. The Create VR Environment and Extract Cubemap tools now generate the intermediate cubemap in 3:2 format instead of 4:3 format, enabling 6K VR (monoscopic) workflows at medium quality on GPUs with only 4GB of memory.

Key Bug Fixes

After Effects no longer crashes when you copy shape layer data from mocha AE CC or mocha Pro.

Parameter values no longer overlap in the Timeline panel on Windows when display scaling is set to 150 percent.

Context menus now work in undocked panels on a secondary monitor on mac OS 10.13 (High Sierra).

Keyboard shortcuts assigned to commands generated by plug-ins now work on Windows.

The recent fonts list at the top of the font menu in the Character panel is no longer missing.

Expression-heavy compositions no longer render more slowly than After Effects 14.2.1.

DNxHD and DNxHR codec QuickTime files exported with alpha no longer have a dark halo in the alpha channel.

QuickTime or AVI files exported via the render queue will no longer be missing the last frame if you have selected a codec that is not native to After Effects and the project is set to Mercury GPU Acceleration.

XML project files (.aepx) saved in a previous version of After Effects no longer open with all effect names removed and all masks renamed to “Mask”.

If the Media Cache location is set to the root directory of a drive, Premiere Pro 12.0.1 no longer fails to load a Motion Graphics template created by After Effects or shows a warning that After Effects needs to be installed.

The June 2017 update for After Effects CC (Version 14.2.1) includes significant performance enhancements as well as bug fixes, and is recommended for all users.

Performance improvements

We fixed the “Cached preview needs 2 or more frames to play back” memory allocation errors, caused by an incorrect estimate of free memory when After Effects attempted to render or preview frames. (Note that you will, however, still see this message if you attempt to preview a single frame.) These fixes should also enable you to preview longer stretches of your timeline.

Text rendering has been optimized. As a result, Dynamic Link rendering performance of After Effects compositions, including Motion Graphics templates and legacy text templates, is now significantly faster, up to 4x faster depending on the composition.

Importing Illustrator or PDF files, or opening a project containing those files, is now 3-4x faster for files with many layers or a very large number of vectors to parse.

Miscellaneous bug fixes

The Camera-Shake Deblur effect now renders correctly when the project color depth is set to 16-bpc or 32-bpc.

Buttons in ScriptUI panels have been reverted to the rectangular appearance seen in After Effects 14.1 and previous releases.

The Lumetri Scopes panel no longer displays at a reduced size on Windows when HiDPI display scaling is enabled.

Overbright pixels in 32-bpc compositions no longer lack a color cast, when appropriate, if the Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, and Footage Panels preference is enabled.

Opening a project that contains a missing JPEG sequence footage now reports the missing sequence correctly instead of “file ‘<folder name>’ cannot be imported this ‘????’ file is damaged or unsupported.”

The CINEMA 4D renderer no longer fails to render the frame or give an error, “CINEMA 4D Render Failed (5070::0)”, if you enable motion blur when the Composition panel is set to an orthographic 3D view.

Changing Brightness in Preferences > Appearance no longer leaves some parts of the user interface at the previous brightness until you restart After Effects. Note that CEP panel tabs, such as the Libraries panel, still have this problem; we are investigating this remaining problem for a future release.

After Effects – Premiere Pro interoperability improvements:

The sample Motion Graphics templates installed by After Effects have been updated so that they no longer fail to render correctly in Premiere Pro if After Effects is installed in a non-English language.

Text layers in a Premiere Pro graphic object now include tracking, kerning, and tsume values when they are brought into After Effects. Also, vertical text is no longer changed to horizontal text.

Shape layers in a Premiere Pro graphic with the fill attribute disabled no longer have a red fill when they are brought into After Effects.

Premiere Pro graphic objects that have effects applied between graphic object layers now replicate the effects on adjustment layers when they are brought into After Effects. A similar problem with masks is solved by replicating the mask as a track matte. Also, keyframes at frame zero in the graphic object are no longer adjusted forward one frame.

Premiere Pro graphic object layers with their visibility eyeballs disabled no longer have their visibility re-enabled when they are brought into After Effects.

Bars and Tone and HD Bars and Tone clips in a Premiere Pro project are now replicated as a placeholder footage object instead of a solid layer when they are brought into After Effects. (Note that the audio tone is still not included, you can add the Tone effect to manually replicate that.)

Team Projects fixes

Team Projects no longer prevents footage from being deleted from the project if a composition or sequence has a dependency on the footage.

Team Projects no longer flags a footage item as needing to be shared if the only change was that the footage was relinked to the same source media.

The January 2017 update for After Effects CC (version 14.1) fixes these bugs:

Adobe Media Encoder and Premiere Pro again render compositions at full resolution, regardless of the resolution set in the Composition panel in After Effects. (When using the Queue In AME command, the resolution you specify in the Render Settings dialog will be used.)

JPEG image sequence footage no longer changes its frame rate and duration when the project is saved, if the frame rate assigned in the Interpret Footage dialog differs from the preference for sequence footage frame rate. Note: JPEG sequences in projects last saved by versions 14.0 or 14.0.1 are not automatically corrected to their previous frame rate. To fix such projects, change the frame rate to the expected value in the Interpret Footage dialog for these JPEG sequences.

After Effects no longer crashes when you open the preferences if the audio device last used by After Effects was disabled or disconnected.

Auto-save timing has been fixed so that the timer only starts after you make a change to a saved (or new) project. This prevents problems where the timer would run while the project was saved but not changed, resulting in auto-save occurring after you make the next change.

After Effects no longer disables the Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, and Footage Panels option on Windows when you unlock the computer while After Effects is active. (You should no longer receive the warning, “Hardware-accelerated views have been disabled because they are not compatible with Remote Desktop”, unless you are actually using Remote Desktop.)

Text templates that use sourceRectAtTime() in an expression now update the comp correctly when the text is changed in Premiere Pro.

Text templates that use expressions to reference other layers now update the comp correctly when the text is changed in Premiere Pro.

Text templates no longer display layers as offline in Premiere Pro if the source file for that layer uses non-English Unicode characters.

When you select a template project in Preferences > New Project, the file dialog box allows you to select all project format types (.aet, .aep, and .aepx) without changing the format type selector.

Creating a new project from a template, when enabled in Preferences > New Project, no longer adds the project template to the File > Open Recent menu.

Orthographic views of compositions using the CINEMA 4D renderer are no longer offset and shifted from layer handles.

Previews with the Skip option enabled (i.e., not zero) in the Preview panel no longer play at less than real-time when you play through previously cached frames.

Composition and layer viewer panels no longer downsample the preview image if you make a change during playback and the composition Fast Preview option is set to Adaptive Resolution.

After Effects no longer crashes when you quit on a Mac computer with an Intel GPU, after you import video footage or JPEG images.

After Effects no longer sometimes crashes when you quit while a preview is playing back.

After Effects no longer crashes on start when trying to load a plug-in from a folder with a very long name.

After Effects no longer crashes if you apply the Glow effect to a synthetic layer (e.g., solid, shape, text, etc.) and the layer is outside of the comp bounds, if the project is set to use GPU acceleration and is in 8- or 16-bpc mode.

The January 2017 update for After Effects CC (version 14.1) also includes these improvements to Team Projects (Beta):

Team projects can now be saved as a local project (.aep) by choosing Edit > Team Projects > Convert Team Project to Project.

The Edit > Edit in Adobe Audition command is now available for layers with audio in a team project.

Many bugs with team projects have been fixed.

The 14.0.1 bug-fix update for After Effects addresses these bugs:

Real-time playback of previews on macOS 10.11 and 10.12 is no longer affected by redrawing the Timeline panel. (Workarounds, such as docking a different panel below the Timeline panel or previewing in Full Screen, are no longer necessary.) Also, After Effects no longer draws a white line at the bottom of the application window.

Stopping a preview or face tracking on macOS no longer sometimes causes After Effects to hang.

Color profiles assigned to video footage no longer are no longer reset to Rec.709 when the project is saved.

Help menu commands which open help pages on Adobe.com now work if After Effects CC 2015.3 is not installed.

After Effects no longer crashes in some cases when using an external multichannel audio device for preview (Preferences > Audio Hardware).

After Effects no longer crashes when quit after importing video footage files on Mac hardware with an integrated Intel GPU.

After Effects no longer crashes when importing or replacing certain PDF files.

After Effects no longer crashes in some circumstances when both a pre-comp (without Collapse Transformations enabled) and its parent comp use the CINEMA 4D renderer.

What's new with Adobe After Effects 2017?

3D rendering engine

Improve rendering performance on your CPU and create elements such as extruded text and shape layers directly inside After Effects with the new 3D rendering engine from Cinema 4D.

Team Projects (Beta)

Collaborate and share sequences and compositions in real time with Team Projects (Beta). Features like version control and conflict resolution are built right into After Effects, Premiere Pro and Prelude so teams can work better together. Available now for Creative Cloud for teams and enterprise customers.

Real-time playback

Speed up your workflow by playing back most raw footage in real-time without rendering or caching first.

Faster effects and interactive performance

Get rid of bottlenecks and work faster with more GPU-accelerated effects, as well as Dynamic Link improvements that eliminate intermediate rendering between Premiere Pro and After Effects.

Live Text Template improvements

Package your compositions in a single file that allows users to easily share Live Text Templates with Premiere Pro.

Character Animator enhancements

Make Photoshop and Illustrator changes to your puppet and update faster with improved Character Animator performance. Switch easily between Character Animator, After Effects and Premiere Pro using Dynamic Link.

Typekit updates

With Typekit Marketplace, you can buy fonts from some of the industry's biggest names and use them in your After Effects projects. Instantly sync your purchased fonts to your devices and bring them directly into your compositions.

Creative Cloud Assets improvements

Archive and restore all your assets stored in Creative Cloud, including the ones in your Creative Cloud Libraries, assets created with CC desktop products, and mobile projects.

Shared templates

Make sure your team and freelancers are always working off the same page by creating your own new project template with set color guides and file structure, and sharing it in Creative Cloud Folders.

Date and time tokens

Keep track of multiple outputs from the same file by adding date and time tokens to your file name output template.

After Effects no longer crashes (kernel panic) macOS 10.11 when started on certain Mac hardware with Nvidia GPU’s. A result of this change is that Mercury GPU Acceleration using Metal is not available for Mac hardware with Nvidia GPU’s. Mercury GPU Acceleration using OpenCL remains available.

H.264 and AVC footage no longer decode with random red frames on Windows computers with certain Intel HD graphics configurations. If you experienced this problem, red frames can still appear for previously cached footage until you clear the caches: click both the Empty Disk Cache and Clean Database & Cache buttons in Preferences > Media & Disk Cache.

Audio no longer unexpectedly loops incorrect samples towards the end of an After Effects composition, when exported via Adobe Media Encoder or dynamically linked to Premiere Pro.

Audio-only previews no longer fail to start if Cache Before Playback is enabled.

Audio-only previews now loop the preview-time indicator (PTI) to the start of the preview range as expected, in sync with audio playback.

Audio no longer unexpectedly loops during previews with the Skip Frames option enabled, if Cache Before Playback is enabled and you interrupt caching before the full range is cached.

Lights with a cone angle larger than 175° no longer cause After Effects to crash on Windows.

Stopping the render queue no longer experiences a long delay in certain situations before the render process stops on macOS.

Exporting a composition no longer has a small probability in certain scenarios of replacing random frames with the wrong frame from the cache.

Resizing a viewer panel is less likely to cause incorrect pixels to be drawn in the expanded or reduced regions of the panel.

Proxies are now recognized when sending footage to After Effects from Premiere Pro.

After Effects no longer crashes if you quit while Premiere Pro was rendering a dynamically linked composition.

After Effects no longer crashes when you set a color management profile for an output module.

Fixed a cause of crashes that occurred when the viewer panel was redrawn in certain cases, such as when panning with the Hand tool.

Fixed a cause of crashes that occurred when expressions were enabled in the project.

Fixed a cause of crashes that occurred when After Effects was quit.

Fixed a cause of crashes that occurred when After Effects was running in headless mode and quit.

Fixed a cause of crashes that occurred when After Effects decodes an incorrectly encoded alpha channel in Apple ProRes 4444 files written by certain third party encoders.

New in 13.8.1

This update introduces native import and export support for the QuickTime Animation codec, and native import support for the PNG video codec and AAC audio codec inside of QuickTime files. This means you no longer need QuickTime installed on Windows in order to use QuickTime files with the Animation, PNG, or AAC codecs, part of our ongoing effort to provide native support for as many codecs as possible. These codecs are also natively supported in the updates to Premiere Pro CC 2015.4 (10.4), Adobe Media Encoder CC 2015.4 (10.4), Audition CC 2015.2 (9.2.1), and Prelude CC 2015.4 (5.0.1).

New & Changed in After Effects CC 2015 (13.8)

Enhanced video and audio playback: After Effects CC 2015 (13.8) uses a new playback architecture to deliver real-time playback of cached frames with synced audio. The new architecture is shared with other Adobe applications, like Premiere Pro and Audition.

Effect rendering on the GPU: The Lumetri Color, Gaussian Blur, and Sharpen effects can now render using your computer’s GPU. This improves rendering performance for these effects by 2x-4x over rendering using only the CPU (depending on the frame being rendered and the speed of your GPU). GPU effect rendering is controlled via the new Video Rendering and Effects option in the Project Settings dialog.

Performance improvements: Many small changes under the hood include faster import and caching of image sequences, asynchronous drawing of viewer panels, faster opening of large projects, improved expression caching, and more.

Lumetri Color effect improvements: The Lumetri Color effect can now render using your computer’s GPU, and includes new HSL Secondary controls and new SpeedLooks presets.

Gaussian Blur effect improvements: The Gaussian Blur effect has been updated to a new version. The Repeat Edge Pixels option from the Fast Blur effect has been added, and the effect can now render using your computer’s GPU. This version of Gaussian Blur replaces both the previous Gaussian Blur (Legacy) effect and the Fast Blur effect, which are still available but have been moved to the Obsolete category.

Add compositions to Adobe Media Encoder with render settings: You can now send compositions from the Render Queue to the Adobe Media Encoder queue with the options you choose in the Render Settings dialog. When you click the new Queue in AME button in the Render Queue panel, queued render items are added to Adobe Media Encoder. Compositions will be rendered by Adobe Media Encoder with the render settings you chose in After Effects.

Read-only collaboration with Creative Cloud libraries: Assets in Creative Cloud libraries can be set to read-only, so they can be shared but not changed or deleted.

Libraries panel improvements: The new Libraries workspace makes it easier to search and add assets to your project. Find the right content fast using filtered search for Adobe Stock, display of length and format for Stock video, and links to video previews.

Scroll panel tabs using the Hand tool: When a panel group has more tabs than you can see at once, you can now scroll the tabs by panning with the Hand tool. For example, hold the spacebar key to activate the Hand tool, then click in the tab well and drag left or right, the same way you would to pan in the Composition panel.

Bug fixes in After Effects CC 2015 (13.6.1)

The preview image in the Composition panel no longer fails to update in certain cases after you make a change to the composition. This fix prevents After Effects from putting the image cache into a bad state, which most commonly occurred on Windows after using Undo, but could also occur after other changes once the project had entered the bad state.

Previewing a composition with audio will no longer fail to start when a layer has an audio effect with an expression, and display an error: Effect cannot use “abort” callback when called with “unrecognized plug-in effect command” command. ( 25 :: 19 )

Viewer panels (Composition, Layer, Footage) no longer show downsampling artifacts when the viewer zoom is set to 50% zoom, the viewer resolution is set to Full, and the Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, and Footage Panels option is enabled in Preferences > Display.

After Effects no longer fails to start on computers with older processors lacking a specific instruction set (e.g., AMD Phenom II and Athlon processors). The error message given for this specific issue was “The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000001d)” or “The application was unable to start correctly (0xc0000142)”. Note: A similar issue affects Premiere Pro CC 2015 (9.1), for which the fix is somewhat more involved. An upcoming Premiere Pro update is intended to address this issue. Thank you for your patience.

After Effects no longer generates the wrong image for layers using some plug-ins in 16-bpc or 32-bpc (bits per channel) color mode. Affected plug-ins included Digital Film Tools Film Stocks and Digital Anarchy plug-ins.

Creative Cloud account names that use non-ASCII characters (e.g., Japanese and Chinese characters) no longer cause an error “could not convert Unicode characters” when you start After Effects.

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